That’s when I heard it. The clink I was waiting for, the sound of glass against wood. After the door shut, I heard the other two men start pacing around the room. I would have to wait until they were at the farthest point away.
“Oh, yeah, that head girl. Sweet little cunt. Maybe I’ll hit it one more time before they stick her in the ground.”
People say they see red when they’re angry. It’s not a figure of speech. For me, a veil of pink flooded my vision as I listened to those men, the men who’d taken the one person I’d ever loved away from me. She had drowned in her own blood, and as those words filled the air, I was ready to spill some of theirs.
They hadn’t expected me to have any strength left, so they hadn’t bothered to fasten me to the chair. I exploded off, lifting my arms off the back of the chair and propelling myself toward the table. I slammed the glass against the surface, shattering it into perfect blades. I picked up the biggest and thrust it across the first man’s throat.
The other two charged me. I kicked one to the ground while I rammed the other against the wall. As his head bounced against it, I had time to slice his neck open too.
The third man cowered on the ground below me. From the tone in his voice, I realized that he had been the one to talk about Maureen as if she was nothing, a piece of garbage to be fucked and thrown away. As he begged for his life, I remembered when Keegan had found himself in the same position: the time I had given him mercy, the time he made me hesitate.
The man didn’t know what I was talking about when I said “never again” and drew the piece of glass through his trachea.
I knew I had only mere seconds to escape that room. I dug through the pockets of each man and found the keys to my handcuffs. I freed myself and looked around. I couldn’t be sure there weren’t still people in the building. Even if the other officers had left, there were three more of Keegan’s men on the late shift, and if any were still around, I would need that split second of hesitation from them, only a second before they realized I wasn’t one of them.
I started stripping the man who was closest to my build and slipped his uniform on over my torn skin.
The final piece was getting a gun. I wasn’t used to them but I had enough of an idea of how they worked to get by. I inspected all three guns and settled on one already fitted with a silencer.
As I examined it, I realized what they would have been using the silencer for.
They never planned on letting me leave this room.
I slipped out and started inspecting my surroundings. The station was deserted, just as Keegan had demanded. Everyone was out searching for his brother’s remains. It looked like I hadn’t needed the uniform after all.
I wondered if his officers realized that anonymous phone call had just saved their lives.
I searched the empty desks until I found a lighter then started following signs to the morgue. An arrow indicated that I needed to go downstairs. That’s where I would wait for Keegan.
I flung open the door and let it slam behind me. The morgue smelled of bleach and cherries, from an air freshener that sprayed a sweet chemical mist every five minutes.
It had sprayed twice before I heard Keegan’s voice.
“Where are you, you little sonofabitch? I’m gonna tear you apart.”
I ducked behind an examination table. Even in the chaos, I shuttered realizing that Maureen would be on it soon. But if the night went how I planned, she’d never have to. The glass had cut into the palm of my hand and I ignored the tickling as the blood ran down my arm.
“I’m down here with her!”
I heard two sets of feet pounding down the stairs.
Keegan entered first, followed by his friend. The entire room was full of metal cabinets; from my vantage point, I could see their every movement. Keegan tried to taunt me as he stepped further and further into the room, his counterpart cowering behind him.
Once his back was to me, I struck. I was on the first man before he heard my footsteps. I plunged the glass into his chest and pulled downward, opening his abdomen, almost in the same place that they’d opened Maureen’s. As he fell, glass still protruding from his body, I faced Keegan. As he reached for his gun, I knew I’d only have one shot to take him down. At that moment, I changed my mind about the gun. I knew I could fight with my hand, and I knew I only had one chance. That moment was not the time to miss my mark. I reached for a pair of medical scissors that I saw sitting on the exam table, reaching my weapon before he reached his.
At first, Keegan didn’t seem to realize that there were scissors in the side of his neck. His eyes moved toward his wound and didn’t seem to comprehend what he saw. The blood pulsing down his body seemed to match the rivers that had escaped from my hand.
He fell toward the ground.
The last sound he heard before he lost consciousness was my footsteps and the clicking of the morgue door behind me.
I wanted him gone. Completely. I wanted there to be nothing to bury but dust. So when I got to the top of the stairs, I used all my strength to shove one of the desks toward the staircase, pushing it until it jammed up against the morgue door.
Whoever was here after me wouldn’t be able to move the desk in time.
Jordyn was already outside when I emerged from the station. “That phone call…it was you wasn’t it?”
She looked at the ground. “I didn’t want you to have to live with killing all those people. I get why you want to, I do, but…you’re important too, not just her. Something could have happened to you in there. You’re damn good with a knife but they all have guns. I didn’t want to go back to those kids without you.”
I didn’t know what to say. She may have saved my soul as well as my life. No words would suffice, so I stuck with a nod. “Did you bring it?”
She nodded and reached into some bushes next to her and pulled out two cans of gasoline. I took them from her and unscrewed the caps. She didn’t say a word. I threw the liquid in thick streams across the front door. Once each can was empty, Jordyn finally spoke. “Are you sure you want to do this? You know that after this, there’s no going back, right?”
I withdrew the lighter from my pants pocket. “That’s the idea.”
I threw the lighter over my shoulder. I could hear the roar of the flames behind me as we burst into a run. I can’t be sure, but even as we reached the edge of town, I swore I could still feel its heat.
I smiled as the boat pulled into port at the edge of the beach where days earlier we had left Dominic and the children. I saw his face beaming back at me.
He embraced us both. “My brother’s watching the children. They’re gonna be very happy to see you.”
“I’m going to be happy to see them.” Even as I said it, I wasn’t sure it was true. Of course I wanted to see the children, but I wondered if they would know. I wondered if they would be able to look at the wound on my hand and see the limp in my step, the wince in my face as the flaps of hidden skin on my back stretched and contorted with each move. I wondered if they would know what I had done. I wondered if they would still see me as their savior, or know what I had become: a bringer of death, whose only hope of redemption was if God really did love all his children, even the ones who seemed damned from the start.
The sun had peeked over the water to announce the start of a new day. Two months had passed since we had arrived at Sebastian's farm and everything was perfectly organized. The children even got to have their own beds to sleep in. They were crowded into two rooms but they didn't seem to mind. The kitchen was stocked with the dishes and pans that we had brought from Dom's apartment. Sebastian told his neighbors about our situation and they seemed willing to keep their mouths shut if anybody from the United States started asking around.
There was only one thing left to do.
In the barely twinkling sunrise, Jordyn and I made our way to a back corner of the farm. Nobody was awake yet, and she was the only one who I wanted with me for what I was about to do.
&nb
sp; We had just finished it the day before. All the seeds were planted in organized rows, even some starter plants that we got from one of Sebastian's friends in town. Jordyn had insisted we put tomato cages over the top of the starters that were for now just nubs in the earth. “They're so small, though.”
“Trust me, they won't be for long.”
Everything was ready except for one thing.
Nick had painted it for me the minute we started the garden. When he handed it to me, I couldn't help but smile.
That kid, sometimes.
I squatted down and shoved the staked sign into the ground, right at the front of the garden. It stood small and proud, marking the entrance of what would become the most colorful, vibrant place on the entire farm. I scooted back, and Jordyn put her hand on my shoulder. “It's perfect, Cain.”
I swallowed hard, but managed a sad smile.
“She would have hated it. Would have thought it wasn’t nearly glitzy enough.”
“Yup. But it's still perfect.”
In the best script handwriting a ten-year-old could muster, the sign said “Maureen's Place” across the front.
A moment passed between us in silence, Jordyn hovering over me, and me staring at Maureen's name. Finally, she squatted down next to me, and grabbed my hand. “You know she wasn't the love of your life or anything dramatic like that, right?”
I took a deep breath. That realization had been drifting around in my head for a while, but I hadn't allowed it voice until then. “Yes, but she was the first.”
“The first what?”
“The first to…I don’t know…see me.”
Jordyn grabbed me by the chin, pulling my head around to face her and away from Maureen. “But she won't be the last.”
Heavily, I nodded.
The days went by and turned into years. We spent our days as a family, a family that I had never had before arriving. We read stories to the children, even setting up a little schooling system where we taught them the basics that they hadn’t had time to learn when they were too busy trying to stay alive. Some would squish together on Sebastian’s couch, with the rest resting against their knees. And every night, Jordyn, Dom or I made sure we tucked them into bed. I started to think I could grow old there, living under the warm glow of the island sun.
One afternoon changed everything.
I was walking slowly down the street of the village near our new home. Hot smoke hovered in the air, and I passed by steaming grills full of plantains and thick red meat, some still on the bone. Some of the townspeople waved at me and called me by name, and I nodded with a warm smile.
I slipped into a pharmacy to grab some more aspirin for myself and Dominic. Ever since we had arrived, we had been building furniture with his brother in order to help earn our keep. Feeding so many extra people wasn’t cheap, and none of us had planned to live at his brother’s without repaying him for his kindness. But helping for a good cause didn’t seem to excuse us from aching muscles.
I almost didn’t notice his face, but when I passed by the American newspaper dispenser machine that sat outside the store, I saw something I wasn’t ever supposed to see again.
Keegan’s face was staring back at me.
I threw a quarter in the machine and practically broke the tray grabbing at the paper as it slipped out. In the picture, I could see the scissors scar on his neck. Keegan was not only alive, but he was now in charge of one of the most powerful governmental agencies in the world.
Keegan Promoted to Head of Presidential Taskforce
Sergeant Marcus Keegan, best known for heroically trying to save a fellow officer from a fire started by a terrorist, has been promoted to the head of the Taskforce, the elite unit responsible for enforcing the Parental Morality Law. A presidential spokesperson praised Keegan for his aggressive criminal apprehension tactics: “With the unexplained surge in Parental Morality Law violations, we need someone like Sergeant Keegan to teach his methods to all our Taskforce Officers, and make sure his standards are met.”
I threw the paper down and raced back toward the farm.
As I ran, I went over that night over in my head. Maybe the scissors didn’t go deep enough. Maybe he collapsed from pain, not from lack of consciousness. But even then, how could he have gotten out?
The how didn’t matter. Maybe he made a deal with the devil. But whatever he did, he was out, and he had more power than he or I could have ever imagined.
As the farm started to grow in the distance, I let myself feel the sweat dripping down my forehead, the sting in my legs, and the air expanding my lungs.
I found Jordyn out in the garden when I arrived. She looked happy, smiling peacefully over a bed of well-tended vegetables, plentiful and bursting with color.
My eyes glossed over when I realized I was about to destroy it all.
When she saw, me she stood up immediately. She already knew something was wrong. Before she could speak, I put my hands on both her shoulders and looked her square in the eyes, uttering five words that would change our lives forever: “We have to go back.”
EPILOGUE
The grass was trimmed perfectly, each blade stretching tall at exactly the same height. A slight breeze pushed against them, making a wave through the lawn in front of us. With the movement, the strands seeming to warn us to go back the way we came. A few thick trees sprinkled the property, begging to have a swing dangling from their branches. The whole scene looked like something out of a storybook, besides the armed guards.
There didn’t seem to be more than a couple arms’ lengths between them.
We watched the White House from the shadow of a building across the street, until I felt a tingling in my skin and I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Let’s go.”
I only managed a couple of steps before I felt Jordyn’s fingers dig into the flesh of my arm. “Cain, no. There’s too many of them. We won’t even get passed the front yard.”
“Jordyn I have to try. Keegan’s in charge of all of them. There’s going to be an army of guys exactly like him!”
She stared at me. “There already is. That newspaper you saw was old. Really old. We’re already too late.” I tried to tug my arm away from her grasp but she just squeezed tighter. “Cain, we will kill him, I promise. But not today.” If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn I saw tears in her eyes. “Not today.”
I stood still and took one last look across the street. We were far away, but I could still make out their eyes. Like Keegan’s, their eyes were empty, full of the same emptiness he had in his as he gunned down a bunch of young girls.
“Ok, but we have to do something.
Jordyn looked at me. She didn’t have to say out loud that she agreed. “What’s next then?”
I thought of the children we had left back at the compound, and the hugs we were given as we boarded the boat back to America. A slight smile appeared on my face. “I think we need to get a little more crowded back home, don’t you?”
She smiled back. “Absolutely.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Renee N. Meland lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest with her husband and two dogs. When she isn’t writing, she can be found working in their greenhouse, trying a new wine, or having her husband teach her a new dish. This is her second novel.
Don’t miss her other novels:
The Extraction List
Leave me Lost: Book Two in The Extraction List Series (coming soon!)
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Between the Cracks and Burning Doors: Book 2 of The Extraction List Series Page 12
